INTERESTING AND UNUSUAL FACTS ABOUT NAPOLEON
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INTERESTING AND UNUSUAL FACTS ABOUT NAPOLEON
In 1769 in the city of Ajaccio, located on one of the Mediterranean islands - Corsica, the future Emperor of France Bonaparte Napoleon I was born.
The article collects facts related to this unruly man who has entered the history of Western Europe.
1. The Bonaparte family belonged to aristocrats, his ancestors settled in Corsica in 1529. Carlo Buonaparte, the father of the future colonel, was a Corsican nobility and served as a judge, while his mother, Maria Leticia Ramolino, was the daughter of a Corsican bridge inspector.
2. Bonaparte was the second child in a family of 13 children. Five died at an early age. Four brothers and three sisters lived to adulthood.
Remarkable: The older brother Joseph subsequently became king of Naples, then king of Spain. Lucien was French interior minister. Louis was the father of Napoleon III. The younger brother Jerome became the head of the Kingdom of Westphalia (part of the territory of modern Germany).
3 . At baptism, parents gave their second child the name Napoleone di Buonaparte. At that time Corsica was already part of the French Empire, and therefore Napoleone changed his name and surname. Now they were more vocal in French - "Bonaparte Napoleon".
4. Although the last name and name have been changed, he has been nicknamed among his close friends: "Little Corsican" and "Corsican Dictator". But nevertheless, he was the first Corsican to successfully graduate from the French Military Academy.
5. Bonaparte was interested in mathematics and geometry. The theorem of parallel triangles inscribed on each side of an arbitrary triangular figure (Napoleon's theorem) was proved by them.
6. There is a historical fact that Napoleon, as a guarantor, wished to serve in the Russian army.
In 1788 Catherine II was signed an imperial decree, where foreigners were allowed to serve in the Russian army, but in the rank lower, which they had in their homeland.
Ambitious Bonaparte, having learned of this order from Lieutenant General Ivan Zaborovsky, refused his request.
7. Bonaparte was an educated man and often visited the theater. But he never applauded during performances. The audience knew this feature and therefore after the performance of another aria in the hall instead of ovation there was silence.
History has recorded a case when the emperor was present at his favorite opera "Romeo and Juliet", then after the French opera singer Crementini performed Romeo's pre-death aria "Ombra odorata aspeta" one of the ministers delighted with the performance eating, cheered, but came to his senses and immediately left the hall.
8. Bonaparte began his military service at 16. After 8 years he was in the rank of general of the French army. He was appointed commander of the internal troops at the age of 26. In 1803, at 34, he became emperor of France.
9. Historians claim that Napoleon could read at a speed of 2000 words per minute and memorize the text. In addition, he had a unique visual memory: he remembered the faces and names of his soldiers, who distinguished their courage during battle.
10. In 1808, Bonaparte met in Erfurt the children of Russian Emperor Paul I: Alexander, Catherine and Anna. After a while, he proposed Catherine to marry him, and then through their brother he negotiated a marriage with Anna. Considering that Bonaparte was a person who illegally took power, the imperial family refused him under various proposals.
11. Shortly before the attack on Russia, the French Emperor with Alexander I attended the premiere of the play "King Oedipus". The same night, the monarch had a dream in which a bear was tearing his breast apart. After Russia's victory in the civil war of 1812, Napoleon made sure that the dream turned out to be prophetic.
12. One of the drinking cups for Napoleon was made from the skull of the famous mystic Alessandro Caliostro.
13. In 1800, an attempt at Bonaparte was prepared by political enemies. This evening, Josephine de Bogarne's wife persuaded him to go to the opera house for the premiere of a new musical piece, but for some unclear reason he did not want to leave the palace. As a result, he was quickly placed into one of the cavalry crews, where he fell asleep and woke up from the explosion. The only thing that saved the emperor from death was that he was not riding in his chariot.
14. Those close to the emperor noted in his memoirs that he was sincere and understanding towards his first wife Josephine.
But at that time France needed an heir to the imperial throne. Given this circumstance, Bonaparte married for the second time Princess Maria Louise, the daughter of the Austrian Emperor Francis I, who bore him in 1811 his only legal son Francois-Joseph.
15. The French monarch had two more illegitimate sons - Charles Leon and Alexander Valevsky. But history made its correction: none of the sons became the emperor of France, and the grandson of his first wife Napoleon Louis Bonaparte (Napoleon III) became a monarch and the first president of the French Republic.
16. During a military company in Egypt, in 1798, French scientist Bonaparte helped decipher ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs carved on a plate of a plutonic mountain breed ("Rosette Stone").
Three years later, English troops captured Egypt. Napoleon general Maine tried to take the stone to France, but he failed, and the find ended up in a British museum.
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17. Historians found documents in the archives confirming that Napoleon was the author of the modern green-white-red flag of Italy. This happened after he declared himself king of Italy in 1805.
18. Bonaparte was very annoyed when his soldiers used the edges of their sleeves to wipe their noses. That's why the French-shaped sleeves had buttons.
19. There is a hypothesis that while near the pyramid of the Great Sphinx, Napoleon gave the order to shoot at him with guns, which resulted in his nose being cut off.
Actually, this part of the pyramid was destroyed thanks to wind and sharp fluctuations in temperature. This is evidenced by drawings made 500 years before Napoleon.
Historians allege that the emperor was unable to give such a directive as he had begun a systematic study of Egyptian heritage.
20. In his youth, the future commander kept a diary. The diary was completely filled with records of each day's events. Only one page remained clean, with the title: "Little Island. Holy Helena. The year 1815
It's inexplicable, but factual, the record was made 38 years before the overthrow of the emperor in exile on the rocky Atlantic island.
21. Napoleon was long thought to be of short stature. In those days in France, a unit of measurement of length was equal to the linear size of the foot of the king who was in power at that time ("royal's foot").
According to this, Bonaparte was 5 feet 3.5 inches and the average Frenchman was 5 feet 3 inches. The opinion of the French commander's small stature was fabricated by the English press, portraying Napoleon as constantly evil because of his physical disability.
22. The number "18" for the emperor was fateful: on November 18, 1799, as a result of a coup, thirty-three-year-old Bonaparte became a representative of the business community (consul).
After the Battle of Borodin, there was a victory of the Russian army, which defined the final defeat of Napoleon's army (Battle of Tarutin). It happened on the 18th of October.
In 1815, on June 18, the Battle of Waterloo ended for Bonaparte as the final defeat in the war.
The monarch arrived at the place of his final exile on October 18.
The French emperor was buried in a grave 18 feet deep.
The French warship with the body of Napoleon sailed from the island on October 18.
23. The volcanic island of Saint Helena, where Bonaparte Napoleon was sent into exile by the English in 1821, belongs to the United Kingdom. But part of the territory (0.14 km) where there are two houses where the monarch lived and the place of his burial is a property of France.
24. To this day, no one can find evidence of the cause of Napoleon's death. After the monarch's death, many researchers held the opinion that the emperor was poisoned by arsenic which was sprinkled into food by Marquis Charles-Tristan de Montoln, adjutant Bonaparte. This opinion was based on the fact that when his body was transported to Paris 19 years after his death, according to his will, it was in good condition.
The other version was expressed by seven famous pathologists of that time: Napoleon died of stomach cancer. His family also supported the theory, claiming the disease was hereditary.
25. During the reign of Bonaparte Napoleon under his leadership, the Cabinet of Ministers authorized a number of reforms that influenced the course of French history. Many of them survived before our time.
26. On March 21, 1804, the Civil Code, also known as the Napoleon Codex, came into force in France - one of the most important regulatory and legal acts in history, restoring the traditions of Roman law and serving as a model for lawmakers.
“My glory is not in winning forty battles. What will never be forgotten, that will live forever is my Civil Code, these are the protocols of the Council of State," Bonaparte himself said. But although Napoleon actively participated in the work of the codification commission, the lawyer Jean-Elien-Marie Portalis should be considered the main developer of the Codex.
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